47 pages • 1-hour read
Remote Control
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
Nature/Trees
Nature is a key motif in the novella, with Sankofa having a special relationship with trees and natural landscapes in the text. Throughout childhood, she spends much of her time in the shea tree in her backyard, while looking over the fence at the shea tree farm in Wulugu. When she needs refuge, such as when she suffers from malaria or is hiding from the politician and his bodyguard, she sits up in the tree, separating herself from the difficulties of the world both physically and emotionally.
After Sankofa leaves home and becomes The Daughter of Death, trees continue to play an important role in her life as they provide her with one of her only sources of belonging. After she destroys the man’s car and inadvertently kills him to defend herself, she finds refuge in a mango tree by the stream, spending several days there while she adjusts to her new life of isolation. Then, after fleeing RoboTown, she spends several months living in the forest, sleeping in a shea tree and using a fallen tree as a place to keep her belongings. The forest serves as an important element of Redefining the Self After Trauma and Change, as Sankofa recovers from her trauma in RoboTown and the death of Alhaja, even carving Alhaja and her family’s names into the trunk of the tree as a form of memorial. As Sankofa struggles with her lack of belonging, the forest provides her with a source of comfort and a place to come to terms with who she is and what her powers mean.
Nature is an important part of Sankofa’s mythic quality, tying her to its ancient aspect and emphasizing the value of the natural world. In the futuristic world that the novella builds, technology plays an important role in nearly everyone’s lives. However, because Sankofa cannot touch technology, her character is inherently different from those around her. As a work of Africanfuturism, Remote Control emphasizes The Duality of Technology, while reminding the reader of the important role that nature still plays, even as technology dominates much of society. Sankofa’s connection to the trees, which become a key aspect of her happiness and her survival, reinforces this idea.
The Seed
The seed that Sankofa finds as a child is a key symbol in the text, embodying The Burden of Power. Initially, the seed serves as Sankofa’s source of power, causing a rupture in her life when she inadvertently kills the citizens of Wulugu. The seed then serves as a catalyst for change. Her journey to try to find it throughout the novella reflects her journey of self-discovery. She feels as though she needs the seed to feel fully whole. However, as she changes and accepts the duality of her power as a source of both potential harm and good, she is able to abandon the seed. Her act of placing it at the base of the tree at her childhood home reflects her symbolic acceptance of her new identity.
In the final moments of the novella, the symbolism of the seed changes as Sankofa sees that it has been replicated by LifeGen. When she looks out at the tree farm, with new seeds at the base of each tree, she realizes that she cannot allow her dangerous power to be transferred to anyone else and, more importantly, harnessed by LifeGen. Although she has accepted who she is and what it means to have this power, she also recognizes the dangers of it being controlled by a corrupt, massive technological corporation. In the end, when she chooses to destroy the numerous seeds, she is destroying the root of that corruption.
Drones
Drones in the novel are a symbol of the duality of technology. When Sankofa lives in RoboTown, she soon realizes that the town not only has the robocop, but also a fleet of drones that the robocop can use to surveil others and make his decisions for the town’s safety. While such surveillance initially seems to serve a benign function, Sankofa later learns that LifeGen also uses the drones to surveil and keep the citizens in line, with one of the drones attacking her and threatening her with LifeGen’s power.
The attitudes of the townspeople toward the drones subtly reflect the dangers of becoming too reliant or passive in the face of technological advance. Since the townspeople assume that it is only the robocop that can keep them safe and accident-free, they cease to question the more nefarious potential uses of such surveillance via the drones and fail to recognize the pitfalls of their own growing passivity. The townspeople accept the surveillance and LifeGen’s growing control over their town without questioning it, until the fatal accident reveals the limitations of technology and just how helpless and confused they have become. The problem Sankofa presents to the drones, as someone who is hard to “read” and who cannot be easily surveilled, also helps to expose LifeGen’s sinister side: The amount of information LifeGen desires, and their willingness to easily resort to threats and assault when they feel thwarted, reinforces the sense that LifeGen is not spreading this technology to improve the lives of the townspeople, but to control them.
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